


In the Shadow of Mountains

by Kitty_Highball



Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, F/M, Lycanthropy & Snark, Pre-Relationship, References to the Child Ballads, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2020-04-24 07:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitty_Highball/pseuds/Kitty_Highball
Summary: Otherwise known as the fic In Which Lupin and Tonks Run Face-First into A Child Ballad.





	1. As I Walked Out

**Author's Note:**

> This can't be a new idea. Someone, somewhere, in the depths of the internet, has looked at the noble idiocy of Remus Lupin, the unyielding stubbornness of Nymphadora Tonks, shapeshifting in general, and thought, instantly, of Tam Lin. (Someone other than me, I mean.)
> 
> All of the chapter titles are lines from traditional British folk songs - folkies, knock back a shot of Firewhiskey every time you recognise one. 
> 
> WIP - takes place after 'What's Bred In the Bone', but you don't have to have read that fic to get...something?...out of this one.

Outside of Melrose it was raining and Tonks plodded on over the sprung turf. Soggy in the borderlands.

The hill she was trudging up was high enough that she could have had a good view of the Tweed stretching away beneath her. As it was, all she could see was water, water everywhere. A particularly cold trickle of rain ran down the side of her neck and she re-cast an imperivius charm, and trudged along, thinking longingly of the pub she had booked to stay in, and wishing she could just give up her search and apparate to a nice not bath there and then.

She hadn’t seen anyone else in the foothills all day. She hadn’t found what Albus Dumbledore had sent her to find either.


	2. The Day Being Past And The Night Coming In

“It may take an unexpected shape, if, indeed, there is still anything there to be found.”  Albus Dumbldore sounded as calm as he always did, given their subject matter, winding his scarf around his neck and preparing to exit the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place.

“I don’t mind going,” Remus said. “Tonks, you’ve been working double-shifts for the last month – “

“Alas, the sooner we look into this the better,” said Dumbledore.

No one mentioned Saturday’s full moon.

“I could-“

“ _No_ ,” said a room full of people, and Sirius subsided back into his seat, sulkily drawing ancient runes in some spilled sugar.

“I don’t mind,” Tonks had said, although she did, in fact, rather mind.

Dumbledore’s parting shot had been only, “Old. Old and dangerous. Not something to let Voldemort get his hands on, I think. I know I can trust you to do your best, Nymphadora.”

At the moment, Tonks thought, unless she got some more sleep, her best was about as sloppy as Mundungus Fletcher's pick-up lines. 

Sirius nudged her shoulder on his way to get the front door. “Stay for a cup of tea, little cousin?”

“I should go home,” she said, but instead found herself sitting at the table, crumbling bits of Molly Weasley’s best shortbread into gritty bits that got stuck beneath her fingernails.  The kitchen was warm, and she was half-dozing when a clunk and a slosh announced the arrival of a cup of tea, and the second more resounding thud of a stack of books and the astringent smell of Pears soap announced that Remus had arrived with resources.

“The debatable lands,” he said, pulling out the chair next to hers and arranging himself in it. She would have said it was casually, except she had realized by now that he normally kept at least one chair between himself and every other Order member except Sirius, and that Remus Lupin didn’t do anything casually.

“Not somewhere I’ve spent any time, I’m afraid,” he said, bent over a scuffed copy of Jacob’s English Myths and Legends.  He was skimming efficiently through the book’s index, his thin profile coin-sharp under a mouse-fine thatch of disordered hair.  “Sirius, weren’t you there in ’79?”

“1980,” said Sirius, coming back into the kitchen, and scooping up the Order minutes. “James and I spent a good two months staking out a Death Eater in Berwick-on-Tweed. Of course, it could have changed all out of recognition since then.” He tapped his fingers lightly on the table, thinking, and Tonks saw, suddenly, what he must have looked like before the ravages of Azkaban, all fierce concentration and sharp cheekbones. He paused his train of thought, and grinned at her, face falling into familiar, older lines. “Are you drinking that tea, Tonks, or just watching it?”

She hastily picked her cup up, but her hand slipped and the cup lurched sideways, and sent a milky brown flood across the corner of Remus’ books and his forearm, splattering down onto the flagstone kitchen floor.

Remus yelped, hastily lifting his books out of harm’s way, and sent a further, more minor flood from the top of the books onto the knees of his trousers; Sirius sighed, and summoned, from the recesses of the kitchen, a tea towel.

Remus managed to set down his books and regain his composure – his empty hand flicked out lightly over the table, and he said in his pleasant, slightly hoarse voice, “ _Evanesco_ ,” and the flood disappeared as if it had never been. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified. “You didn’t get burnt did you?”

“It’s fine – don’t worry. “ he said.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling woefully inadequate. “I’d say I’m not usually that clumsy, but…”

“You’re overworked and underpaid,” said Remus drily. “Here,  I’ll get you a fresh cup.”  He moved away from her towards the kettle, and she realized that Sirius was watching his old friend with a rather sardonic grin.

Remus came back with a steaming cup, and reached over her shoulder to set it down in front of her,  and before she could think about what she was going to do, she reached over and hugged him ferociously, pressing her face into the front of his jumper.  Remus froze, perfectly rigid against her. For a moment, she thought his hands were going to reach around and come up to balance, weightless as birds against her shoulder blades, but instead she felt him pulling back away from her, and she hastily released him.

Across the table, Sirius’ sardonic grin widened to include her.

Remus cleared his throat, gave her a faint, rather tense, smile, and settled back down at the far end of the table with his own cup of tea.  Either he was worried that she was about to chuck her fresh cup of tea all over him, or he was wary of being touched by her. Possibly both. Or maybe, she thought, given his propensity for keeping a distance, he just wasn’t used to being hugged and she’d surprised him. She had a feeling that Remus wasn’t a man who enjoyed surprises.

A change of subject was clearly in order, however.  “You’ll have to show me that drying spell. You didn’t have your wand out, you just – “ she waved her own hand out in his general direction, and felt some tension dissipate.

He grinned. “You don’t want to do it like that, Tonks. Not unless you just want to vanish everything and everyone within a half-mile radius of whatever you’re trying to clear up.” His voice was pleasantly neutral, and she had a feeling that he was waiting for Sirius to jump into the conversation.

Sirius, however, was blandly sipping his own tea across the table, and she found herself saying, instead, “I didn’t know you were good at wandless magic.”

Remus laughed. “Good is stretching it. I can manage a couple of spells – only minor things, not anything very powerful. I would have thought they would have gone through it as part of your Auror training though?”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “Mad-Eye spent that bit of the curriculum leaping out at us from blind alleys at random moments to test our reflexes.  We did do a bit of non-verbal work, but not much more than you get in NEWTS, to be honest. Apparently, the Ministry thinks that it’s more important for us all to bond with our fellow Aurors through sensitivity exercises instead of actually, you know, expanding on our abilities and spell repertoire. I could have learnt wandless magic, but I was too busy falling backwards off of a desk to show how much I trusted the rest of my year to catch me.”

Sirius snorted in disgust. “How times have changed,” he said. “Although, to be fair, James and I didn’t get much training either in the classroom. They just sent us out and if we came back alive and uncursed and in one piece from a skirmish, we got a pass, so…”

“Ah yes,” said Remus. “That old learn on the job model.”

“I can’t believe they didn’t teach you anything though,” said Sirius. “Do they just assume that you’re always going to have your wand? Knowing you, you’ll trip over your own shoelaces chasing Death Eaters, and drop it down a gutter, and then where’ll you be?”

She considered sticking her tongue out at him, and then gave it up as too childish.

“Of course, “ said Remus, taking a sip of his tea, “we’ve forgotten that you are in fact perfectly capable of wandless magic already. What are the principles of Apparition, Tonks?”  He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Destination, deliberation and determination,” said Tonks promptly, ignoring Sirius’ groan of “Don’t make us relive OWL year, Moony.”

Remus shrugged elegantly. “There you go then. That’s really all you need. All a wand ultimately does is channel, focus, and direct your innate magical ability. With sufficient clarity of mind, you should be able to perform spells without your wand in much the same way that you apparate. That said, the wand gives you a far greater level of precision and control, and just generally makes spell-casting much easier by providing a channel for your ability to flow through.”

“Otherwise you get the scattergun approach?” said Tonks. “Like when you splinch yourself, or when kids first start showing magical ability and can’t control it?”

“Or, more likely, you get nothing,” said Remus cheerfully. “Even something as straightforward as _lumos_ takes a lot of concentration to maintain.” He extended his hand towards her, and it filled with a warm, flickering light, turning the scuffed wood of the table and the half-full bottle of Firewhiskey next to the Order minutes to amber gold in the dark corners of the room.

“Show off,” said Sirius lazily, but he was grinning. “C’mon Tonks. Give him a run for his money. The Black family honour demands it.”

“You’re the most senior member,” she told him.

“Nah,” said Sirius. “I was never good at it. Too easily distracted -  why d’you think my Animagus is a dog anyways?”

No one mentioned what 12 years in Azkaban would likely do to one’s powers of concentration.

“Right,” said Tonks. “Fine then. But if I blow us all up, I’m blaming you two.” She plunked her wand down on the table, and held out her own hand palm up, mirroring the cupped shape of Remus’ hand.

She thought about the wand movements needed to make _lumos_ , and shook her hand experimentally.

She tried to think about how it felt to apparate, feeling the magical energy gathering down beneath her breastbone and then spiraling out and –

“Ow fuck,” she said, just before she face-planted into the Welsh dresser next to the door.

The Welsh dresser was very wooden. The flagstone floor was very hard. She thought about getting up, and then decided that maybe she could just stay down there for the rest of the night.

Back at the table, Sirius was roaring like a hyena.

 “Are you alright?” said Remus. He stood up and walked over to her. His voice sounded concerned, but his mouth was twitching dangerously and his eyes were very bright.

She sighed. “I apparated, didn’t I?”  She sat up, wincing.

She grabbed Remus’ arm to hoist herself back up and dusted off the seat of her trousers.

“Let’s have another go then,” she said, unwrapping her fingers from Remus’ wrist. For a minute she didn’t think that he’d heard her – he was staring down at their intertwined hands with the sort of expression she’d once seen on a temporarily Petrified Jackalope.  She gently tugged backwards, and his hand, which had seemingly automatically closed on hers to pull her to her feet, eventually loosened and unfurled. 

“Er,” he said, and hastily stooped down towards the shards of the small mixing bowl she’d carried off the dresser in her fall. “Yes. Right. I’ll just get these – "

She was unable to see Remus’ face as he picked up and vanished the broken crockery, but Sirius had reached the point of being bright red and incapable of sound.

“I hope you have a stroke,” she told him, flopping back down at the table.

“Right,” said Remus, dusting off his hands. “Think less about apparition and more about what you envision when you normally cast _lumos_ …”

Half an hour and three more unintentional apparitions later, Tonks put her head on the table and groaned. “I give up. The honour of the Blacks can just be tarnished; I don’t care any more.  I’ll just have to be careful to never drop my wand down a storm drain.”

“You’ll be able to manage it eventually,” said Remus. “It just needs practice. I’m not the best person to learn it from anyways. Really, if you want a lesson in wandless magic, you should ask Minerva McGonagall; she’s quite spectacular.”

Tonks grinned despite herself. “I couldn’t,” she said. “It’d be like being back at school. I’d bungle it and break something irreplaceable to the Order, and then she’d just give me that glare, you  know.”

“The patented McGonagall glare,” said Sirius. “We do indeed know that one, eh Moony?”

“Mmm. That one time in fifth year, with the – “

“I thought she was going to literally behead us,” said Sirius, with much more glee than the phrase warranted. “What did we lose for that stunt? Five million points from Gryffindor?”

Tonks started to laugh. “You couldn’t have. The hourglasses don’t go that high.”

“Minerva did try, though, “ said Remus. “Although I think beneath her exasperation and fury, she possibly admired the ingenuity. Do ask her about wandless magic though Tonks, I’m sure she’d be happy to show you.”

“It’s easy to forget how brilliant she is in her own right,” said Tonks thoughtfully. “I think it’s because I always just associate her with teaching at Hogwarts, you know, or because she’s usually next to Dumbledore.”

Sirius face had gone sober. “I saw her really angry once. It made any disapproval she’d had of us at school look like nothing. It was around the same time as Berwick, when I think about it.  James and I had run into a sticky situation with a bunch of Death Eaters on out Blakely Law – we were outnumbered, and they’d begun using passing hikers as cannon fodder. We called for back up and Minerva was the first to show up. The Muggle news called it a lightning strike, but lighting has nothing on McGonagall in a righteous fury. She just obliterated them. James and I ended up hiding behind a rock just to stay out of her way. “

Tonks grinned, “I’ll make a note of that, will I?  Hide from McGonagall behind rock if you value your life,” A split second after the words left her mouth, she thought about what had indeed happened to James Potter, and winced, but Sirius and Remus didn’t seem to notice.

Sirius laughed. “That was the motto of our schooldays, really.”

“Especially after we got too big to all fit under James’ invisibility cloak,” said Remus. “The statue of Fat Norman by the kitchens was particularly good for diving behind in a pinch though. I nearly caught myself hiding from Snape there when I was teaching just out of pure reflex. What?” he said, in answer to Sirius’ withering glare. “It was that or succumb to an overwhelming urge to hex him.” He started to laugh at the look on Tonks’s face.

“I knew it,” she said, taking a swig of her fresh tea, and managing to retain her grip on the cup this time. “I knew that mild-mannered professor thing was just a facade. What other dark secrets are you hiding from us, Remus?”

And this time she did seem to have said the wrong thing completely, because it was Remus who jerked violently and spilled his tea all over the table. He looked like he didn’t know whether to bolt or to hex her  - fright or flight the Auror part of her brain thought – and she opened her mouth to tell him that she had been joking, but Sirius got there first.

“Moony always was an international man of mystery,” he said. “Right from first year onwards, eh, Remus? First it was being a bloodthirsty, evil creature who snarled at us once a month, and then it was being a werewolf – “

“ _Levicorpus_ ,” said Remus, rather tartly. “Since you want to talk about school. Hoist by your own petard, eh, Padfoot?” He was smiling, but Tonks had the sense that it was only smiling in the way that an animal bares its teeth.

“You’re an evil, cowardly, Dark Creature of the lowest kind,” said Sirius cheerfully as he revolved above their heads. “Tell him, Tonks. Tell him to put me down or you’ll have to arrest him for being a threat to all civilized society. Who dangles their oldest friends upside down above the kitchen table, anyways?”

Tonks shrugged. “Off duty, mate.” She tried to sound as chirpy as she normally did, but despite herself, she found her own hand hovering above her wand where she’d jammed it into her jeans pocket, and the part of her brain that was on duty was more than a little unnerved at Lupin’s speed and utter lack of a tell when casting.

“Tonks, you’re on my side,” said Sirius, turning purple. “You’re my favourite cousin, after all.”

“You mean I’m your only cousin who isn’t a pureblood fruitloop?”

“You’d still be my favourite even if you were a fruitloop,” said Sirius. “Unless you refuse to hex Moony for me. Then I disown you forever.”

“Just think,” she said. “If you did that, you could leave everything to Fred and George instead. I mean, they’re like your honorary cousins – heirs to the noble practice of dangling people about and generally wreaking havoc.”

“And that’s why you’re my favourite,” said Sirius. “Moony, I think all the blood has left my feet; I can’t feel them anymore.”

“We could amputate them?” offered Tonks. Out of her peripheral vision she saw Remus hide a quick grin in his teacup. His shoulders seemed to have come back down to normal from around his ears.

“And there indeed is the heir to the House of Black,” he said, drily. She wondered if he meant that to sound as malicious as it did. She rather thought not, but Sirius whistled.

“The gloves have come off,” he said. “Tonks, you’re truly one of us now. Remus, for the love of Merlin, will you put me down! We’re not fifteen anymore, you know.”

“And yet some things never change,” said a parchment dry voice from the doorway, and all three looked over guiltily to see a poker-faced Minerva McGonagall eyeing them – no, realized Tonks, eying Sirius and Remus – with the sort of grim look that she normally reserved for recalcitrant fifth years getting too big for their boots.

“Minerva,” said Remus, pleasantly, lowering Sirius to the floor, and sounding as unconcerned as if they’d been discussing Order priorities. “Were you wanting to follow up on Rookwood?”  He pushed his chair back and stood up, grimacing slightly and putting a hand to the small of his back as he followed McGonagall out into the hall.   

Across the table, Sirius settled himself back down into his chair, and eyed Tonks.

She raised her eyebrows at him, and he grinned at her, teeth bared.

“So,” he said. “You and Moony, hmm? Interesting.”

“What?” she said.

“I said, interesting. You’ll have to be careful with him though. He doesn’t like to be teased. Not really, although he puts on a good face about it. Bit thin-skinned really, Remus. Always was. ”

“Sirius,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

Sirius’ grin had become wider. “You’ve surely noticed? Or are Auror standards slipping these days?”

“You’re infuriating,” she said.  “I have no idea what you’re wittering on about, and I’m too tired to figure it out. I’m going to finish my tea and then I’m going to go home. Can I borrow English Myths and Legends?”

“Play it that way if you want to,” said Sirius. “I think you’ll be good for him, by the way. If either of you ever gets up the nerve to declare your undying love.”

She realized her mouth was hanging open unattractively and closed it with a snap, and bit her own tongue.  “Ow. I,” she said with dignity, “am not about to declare undying love for anyone. Remus and I are merely united in annoyance at you.”

“Of course you are,” agreed Sirius. “That’s why Remus offered to take your shift, and why he sometimes sits next to you, and also why you felt the need to attach yourself to him like an octopus just for bringing you a cup of tea, _and_ why you snogged him at Christmas. Irritation at me.”

“We’re friends, “ said Tonks, briskly, putting the afore-mentioned snog to the back of her mind and suddenly wanting to go find Remus and kick him very hard indeed for having mentioned it to Sirius in the first place. “You seem to have some trouble with the concept, cousin of mine.”

Sirius shook his head, suddenly gone sober. “Remus doesn’t have friends, Dora. You haven’t noticed that?  He has acquaintances.  Dumbledore and McGonagall like and respect him as a colleague, but they’ve known him since he was eleven. The rest of the Order fear him about as much as they respect him. The Weasley’s are friendly, but even they…you know, Molly Weasley will knit him a scarf and cook him a dinner fit for a king, and genuinely wants to know how he’s feeling, but she won’t leave Ron or Ginny alone with him.”

“Kingsley and Mad-Eye – “

“Kingsley and Mad-Eye trust him about 10% more than they trust Snape, and most of that comes from trusting Dumbledore’s judgement. I suppose there’s always me, but then – “ he gave a rather horrible grimace, gesturing at himself. “I daresay I’m not what I was either. 12 years is a hard gap to bridge, Tonks, when both of you have spent most of that time thinking that the other one was a spy who betrayed your other best friends to their deaths.”

“That’s why I upset him,” she said, realization dawning slowly. “With that crack about secrets.” She grimaced. “Should I apologise, do you think?”

Sirius shook his head briskly. “He doesn’t hold grudges, Tonks. Besides, he’ll have gotten it out of his system by now.”

“That was why you were baiting him,” said Tonks. “I should have guessed.”

“Far too repressed, our Moony,” said Sirius cheerfully. “One day all of that self-control is just going to melt down. Like a lycanthropic Chernobyl.”

“I’m amazed you even know what Chernobyl is,” said Tonks.

“I was in Azkaban, not under a rock in Thurso, bereft of all contact with the modern world. Although that would have been nicer. And I always liked Muggle studies,” he added.  “Some of it’s like magic in its own way. I miss going to the cinema. And there was some great music. David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground...that was where Remus and I found some common ground, you know, originally. He’s always had one foot in the Muggle world, and we liked a lot of the same music. James wasn’t that bothered about music, not really, and Peter – “ he stopped as the kitchen door swung open and Remus came back in.

“Tonks,” he said, and his smile was genuinely sweet. “I would have thought you’d have gone by now.”

“Not yet,” she said. “We’re talking about music.”

“I was telling Tonks about your propensity for David Bowie,” said Sirius.

“Spiders from Mars is still a great album,” said Remus, putting a new stack of files down on his previous stack, and regarding the now two foot pile with resignation.  “Did you tell her about your propensity for platform boots?”

“We somehow hadn’t got to that yet,” said Tonks. She wondered whether to broach it, and then plunged ahead, figuring that she was sitting far enough away from Sirius that he couldn’t kick her under the table.  “Sirius was about to tell me what sort of music Peter Pettigrew listened to.”

“Oh,” said Remus. “Peter.”  The corner of his mouth quirked up, something sour and sharp and mirthless. “Do you know, I can’t really remember.”

Sirius snorted. “Of course you can, Moony. You don’t remember hearing Like a Rolling Stone being played over and over and over again?”

“No,” said Remus. He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “I think it’s been blocked out by the traumatic memory of hearing him sing McArthur Park in the prefect’s bathroom.”

“What’s McArthur Park?” said Tonks.

“It’s the song that dare not, and should not, speak its name,” said Sirius.

“It is,” said Remus, “the worst song in existence. It’s 7 and a half minutes of hell.”

“I think it really is cursed. Just thinking of it brings back – “

“ No, don’t sing it,” said Remus hastily, covering his ears.

“ Someone left a cake out in the raaaaainn, ” caroled Sirius.

“Oh god make it stop.”

“I don’t think that I can taaaaaake it, cause it took so long to baaaaake it – “

“It’s like the horrible forgotten B-Side of Stir My Cauldron,” said Tonks, fascinated.

“We should have known he was a Death Eater even then,” said Sirius, abruptly and mercifully desisting.

“Maybe bad music drove him to it,” suggested Tonks. “I never really stopped to think about what sort of music Death Eaters listen to.”

“Severus Snape likes Vivaldi,” said Remus vaguely.

Tonks spluttered on the last of her tea, and Sirius looked outraged.

“How do you know that?”

“I worked with the man for a year, Sirius.” Remus sounded slightly put out. “I did make some effort in honour of the fact that, as you’ve said, none of us are fifteen any more.”

He glanced up and caught Tonks eye and sighed. “Actually, I didn’t make all that much effort. I drew his name in the staff Secret Santa, and Dumbledore suggested something baroque.”

“Hogwarts has a staff Secret Santa tradition?” said Tonks, fascinated. “Who do you think got you?”

“If I said to you that my gift was small, fire-breathing, and scaly, who would you immediately think of?”

“Wait,” said Sirius. “Hagrid got you a _dragon_?”

“I think he thought that an illegal Miniature Tang Green would be fun for my seventh years. I’m at a loss as to what else he might have been thinking. It was an absolute horror; it kept trying to set me on fire in my sleep. Luckily Charlie Weasley was happy to take it off my hands.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t keep it,” said Tonks.

Remus shook his head. “Other animals don’t tend to be too comfortable around werewolves.”  He sighed, and prodded at his file pile. “I suppose I really should go and have a look at these, shouldn’t I?”

“I thought you were helping Tonksie research Scotland,” said Sirius wickedly. “Ow.”

Tonks shrank her leg back to normal length with some satisfaction, and said, “Don’t worry, Remus, you’ve got enough on.  If you think of anything off the top of your head, then let me know, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. Evil will crumble before me like a –“

“Don’t say it,,” said Remus, jamming his fingers firmly in his ears.

“ – cake in the  – “

“We’ve created a monster, Sirius.”

Sirius, laughing, threw the tea towel at her head. “Get out of here, little cousin. Go take a walk on the wild side.”


	3. Half-Drenched, Half-Dead

The Borders, Tonks thought, weren’t quite the wild side that Lou Reed had meant, but the rain had become a roaring gale by the time she had apparated off the top of a very steep hill in the dark. It was a a relief to see the lights of Eildonside up ahead.  A handful of cottages, one pub with rooms above, and a small owlry and general store, it was possibly the smallest wizarding village in Britain, tucked into a fold at the foot of three swooping hills.

Tonks fought with the pub door, was finally blown in by a gust of wind and rain straight off the Russian steppes, and was hit hard by both the heavy wooden door and an automatic drying charm at the same time. She staggered her way to the bar, panting, and flapped her hand at the elderly barman.

“Bit windy out there, lass?”

“Just a bit,” said Tonks. “Bit damp. You’re not by any chance still serving food are you?”

“Kitchen closed at 8:00, hen. But your friend’s ordered you summat.” He smiled at her, jerked his head towards the corner table by the fire, and went back to squinting at the Daily Prophet through his black-rimmed spectacles.

“My – oh!” she said, and started towards the fireplace. “What’re you doing here?”  She flopped down opposite a familiar, lanky figure and then took a good look. “You look dreadful, Remus.”

“Good evening to you to,” he said, closing his book .  He did look awful, face a muddy shade of pale, skin stretched taut over bones, grey eyes bright and feverish.  “I found something I think might be useful to you.”

“Thank Merlin for that, because I’ve got bugger-all,” said Tonks. “Tell me you didn’t wait to eat until I got here.”

He shook his head. “I ate earlier. Appetite’s always a bit finicky this time of the month.” He raised a brandy glass in her direction. “Eat first, and I’ll tell you what I’ve got.”

Tonks uncovered the plate that was sitting on the small side table next to her armchair, balanced it on the arm of her chair, and dug in.

“ I hope that’s alright,” said Remus, apologetic. “I wasn’t sure if-“

“Lupin, you got me enough mashed potatoes to sink the Titanic. You truly are the man of my dreams,” she said through a mouthful of potatoes and gravy.  She looked up from her dinner plate in time to catch him burying his face in his brandy glass. A blush had flooded up to cover him from throat to forehead, and he mumbled something she didn’t catch from the depths of the glass.  When he lowered the glass, the heightened colour on his thin face looked hectic and she thought suddenly about Victorian consumptives, dazed and translucent and struggling against the betrayal of their own bodies.

She chased the last of her peas around her plate, and then set it aside and wiped her mouth and looked up to catch Remus watching her, and then it was her turn to go scarlet.

“Hope that wasn’t too horrific to watch, “she said. “I just completely hoovered that down, didn’t I?”

Remus shrugged. “You’re sitting with your back to the rest of the room,” he offered. “Besides, remember I live with Sirius.  At least you don’t argue that licking the plates constitutes adequate dishwashing.”

“That is true.” She grinned. “I may never eat anything at Grimmauld Place again, by the way.”

“Sirius’ll be pleased – it’ll mean he won’t have to share dumplings next time we get takeaway.”

“I’ll be pleased – it’ll mean I don’t have to try to watch the two of you try to eat with chopsticks.”

“I have no idea what you’re referring to. My chopstick technique is impeccable.”

“Lupin, your technique involved stabbing  your dumplings and trying to transfer them to your mouth at 40 miles an hour before they could fall off the chopstick.”

“And thus you see why I don’t eat in public.”

They were both laughing, but there was some sort of underlying tension that Tonks couldn’t pinpoint stemming from him, something prickly and sharp and  - well, hungry, she thought.

She steered the conversation back to safer ground. “You thought you might have found something?”

“Yes,” he said, handing her the book he’d been reading, one long finger marking the page. “The Border’s absolutely rife with myths and legends, but then I had a thought…”

“Hmm.” She took the book and skimmed her way across the pages. “Oh blimey, I hope he’s not after the Wild Hunt.”

Remus laughed, an abrupt, taut sound that no mirth at all in it. “Oh, I rather hope that he is. From what I’ve come across, I think that would be a bit of an overreach even for him. Might solve all our problems.  That wasn’t what I was thinking of, though. Look on the next page.”

She turned the page over. “True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank/and he beheld a marvel gay/a lady that was brisk and bold/ came riding o’er the ferny brae,”  she read aloud and paused. “Is that it?”

 “The region’s famous for it – Thomas the Rhymer? The folk ballad?  Tam Lin’s from this area as well,” he said. “Carterhaugh is only just down the River Ettrick and we’re not far from Roxburgh either.”

“I feel like I should know both of those?” said Tonks. She frowned. “Why do I know both of those?”

“You slept through History of Magic, didn’t you?” said Remus, looking resigned.


	4. Fifty Silver Bells and Nine (Harp and Carp)

“You’ve got to be kidding me,”  said Tonks. “You think that what Voldemort’s looking for is actually a faery queen?” She hauled her still damp rucksack up onto her lap, narrowly missing knocking over the small table between them, and fished about.

“She’d make a dangerous enemy,” said Remus soberly. “She’s the Queen of Elfland, not, a, a, very large pixie. In all of the tales and ballads, she’s immensely powerful. The faery court in general is a bit terrifying. It’s bound by its own rules, so if you know what they are, you can sometimes outwit them. But if you’re unlucky, you end up spending a hundred years under a hill, or turned into a voiceless dove, and hunted,  or being sacrificed to something nasty…”

“What used to be Huntlie Bank isn’t far at all from here,” she said, muffled slightly by wet nylon. “I tramped all over the Eildon Hills today. If we look at the map –“. Her fingers met an unpleasantly slimy wet mass of what felt like wadded up paper, and she sighed and amended her words. “If we look at what _used_ to the be the map…”

“Here.” Remus took the drenched map from her and tapped it briskly with his wand. The map began to unpeel itself in a slow, grudging kind of manner, shedding the odd fragment, and splitting down the seams, and he spread it out on the table. “If we’re here, and Melrose Abbey is here…” He squinted at the blurred ink.

“There,” said Tonks, putting her finger down. “That says the Rhymer’s Stone, doesn’t it? We’re really not far from there at all. Assuming that that’s actually the place, and it’s not just become a tourist trap.”

“Of course, there may be nothing there at all,” said Remus, that apologetic tone back in his voice. “It could just be a wild goose chase.”

“I’ll take all the wild geese I can get, “ she said. Tonks looked up at him, draining the last of his brandy, pale and hollow in the firelight. “Remus,” she said, “thinking of birds, you really could have just owled, you know. You look like death, you didn’t have to come out on a night like this.”

“If it is something, “ he said carefully, “these hills are old, and whatever’s here might well be older.  I thought you might want back-up.”

There was, Tonks supposed, no nice way of telling him that he looked rough enough that Kreacher would have probably been a more effective wingman. "If you're sure," she said finally, doubtfully. She hesitated, tried to think again of a nice way to ask what she wanted to ask, and then gave up.

"Er, not to be rude," she said. "But is there anything I should know? About your, er, furry little problem? Magic related that is," she hastily added.  She mentally scrabbled for a minute, and came up with, "Increased reaction times?  Decreased reaction times? Er..."

Remus shook his head. "More knackered at the end of the day and at the start, but otherwise I won't be too bad."  He hesitated in turn, and she cut him off before he could be self-deprecating.

"Is that the same for everyone with your..." she hesitated again, very aware of the space and the silence around them.

“Condition? I don’t know,” he said quietly. “D’you know, I can’t say that I’ve ever met another werewolf who had any kind of adequate magical training at all.” In response to Tonk’s look, he shrugged. “There must be more of us out there, but Dumbledore has never mentioned letting another one into Hogwarts.”

His voice sounded stiff and curt, and Tonks thought, unbidden, of Sirius’ warning, and said, her tone deliberately light.  “He probably thought it would be too much pressure for anyone coming in after you. You downplay your abilities far too much, Remus. I’ve seen your NEWT scores, you know. I think you’re some kind of misguided genius. Especially for DADA. I didn’t even know Stupendous was a mark.”

Remus went very, very still. “How on earth would you have seen my NEWT scores?”

Tonks shrugged elaborately. “Read your Ministry file. What?” she said, in response to the almost ferocious glare she received. “I read everybody in the Order’s when I was deciding to join. I know I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to know who in advance would be a good for a laugh, and who to avoid. I nearly told Mad-Eye to chuck it when I realised that I was going to have to make small talk with Snape.  But I wanted to see Sirius again, as an adult, and – “ it was her turn to hesitate.

Remus raised an enquiring eyebrow.

She thought about all of the reasons she normally gave – good, solid, true reasons for joining the Order. But when she opened her mouth, she said, “And I remembered you as well.  I didn’t realise it until I saw your picture in your file. You and Sirius, you took me to a Muggle fair once, didn’t you? When I was three?  It was a proper carnival, there were rides and lights and candyfloss. Sirius took me on the spinning teacups and you took me on the Ferris Wheel.”

Remus was staring at her, mouth open. “How on earth do you remember that?  I didn’t even remember that until you said it. You’re absolutely right though. We went to Copshawholme Fair. You’d gone with your parents, and we ran into you. Peter was there as well, his parents only lived just down the road.”

 She shook her head. “I mostly just remember the rides. And because it always felt like a treat to see Sirius. He was the cool big cousin.” She grinned at him. “You didn’t rate on the coolness scale back then, I’m afraid.”

“Have I improved since then?” Enquring and dry.

“Oh, a bit,” she said lazily. “I suppose.”

“Shame that you haven’t changed,” he said, and she threw her crumpled up napkin at him and he neatly caught it. “I swore I would never take someone else’s child on a fairground ride ever again. You tried to stand up when we got to the top of the Ferris Wheel and I nearly had a heart attack.”

She grinned. “Sirius would have let me stand up.”

“Sirius at age seventeen had about as much sense as you did at age three, so yes, he probably would have. And then we all would have played that fun game, ‘scrape your cousin off the ground with a putty knife.”  He picked up his empty glass. “Can I get you another drink?”

“Oh!” She fished about in her rucksack, looking for her wallet. “I owe you for dinner, don’t I?”

“Forget it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she started to say, and then saw his face, pinched and white, the hunch of his shoulders as he stood.  Mentally, she amended her statement to thinking that his pride was ridiculous, and then a secondary thought took hold, and she changed tack.

“If you’re sure,” she said. “Remus, were you planning on apparating back tonight?”

“I can stay for another pint if you’re up for it?”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said. “You look like the wreck of the Hesperus, my lad. You’ll splinch yourself. Why not just stay?”

He gave her a faint smile. “I prefer my own bed when I’m under the weather.”

“Your own bed will be a great comfort when half of you is in a Borders car park and the other half is in Newington Green.”  And when he moved past her towards the bar, she put a hand on his arm. “Remus. Stay the night. You can apparate tomorrow afternoon;; you’ll be home well before dark.” 

And to stop the inevitable financial calculations and how to delicately phrase that he couldn’t afford it, she ploughed on. “Now that you’re here, I really wouldn’t mind the extra pair of eyes, if you’re up for a bit of a walk tomorrow. The only room they had was a double one, so there’s loads of space.”

He said, clearly considering, and reluctant with it, “I don’t want to put you out…”

“That’s settled then,” she said cheerfully. “Can you get me a half-pint of Gambler’s Fancy?” 

 “Anyone ever tell you you’re quite adept at getting your own way?” he said, turning towards the bar.

“All the time,” she said, and grinned at him until his face loosened into a reluctant, but genuine grin in return.


	5. How Do You Like Your Bed-Making; How Do You Like Your Sheets

Remus’s grin vanished when he followed her into the small, tidy, double room at the top of the stairs.

“Oh,” he said. “I had assumed it was – you don’t want to - I can just head home, it’s no problem.”

“Remus,” she said. “For a man who got one Stupendous and a substantial number of Outstandings in his NEWTS, you say some remarkably daft things. Which side of the bed do you want? What?” she said, in response to his look. “I don’t bite.”

“I do.” He sounded like he was trying to joke and only making it part way.

“Not till tomorrow night. In the meantime, do you want the side next to the window or next to the door?”

He hesitated in the doorway, a long shadow in his threadbare overcoat. The top of his head reached above the door lintel, and Tonks thought, irrelevantly, that she hadn’t realized how tall he actually was before. Taller than Kingsley, or Sirius. Taller even than Dumbledore, if he ever stopped slouching and stood up straight.

“Remus?” she said. “Window or door?”

“Door,” he said finally, carefully. He edged across the floor as if it was covered in broken glass and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Great,” she said. “Mind if I use the bathroom first?”

She couldn’t hear anything over the sound of running water in the bathroom, but when she came out, Remus had neatly hung his coat up on the back of a chair, and lined his shoes up beneath, and was perched on the edge of the bed in his stocking feet, frayed shirt cuffs still tightly buttoned close against his wrists.

“Tonks,” he said. “I can just sleep in the chair. Really, it’s fine. I fall asleep in chairs all the time at Grimmauld Place.”

“Yes, and then you walk around clutching your back for three days straight. I’ve seen you.”  She dug about in her rucksack, pulled out her unworn hat and smacked it with her wand to transfigure it. The hat became a man’s large, baggy t-shirt, and she held it up. “Think that’ll fit you?”

Remus looked up from examining his fingernails, looked at the t-shirt, did a double-take, and looked very hard at her. She kept her own bright, innocent smile plastered on.

“You actually expect me to wear a t-shirt that says ‘Life, Love, Laughter, Lycanthropy” he said, and his voice was far too calm.

Tonks tossed the t-shirt across the bed to him. “If the shirt fits…”

He caught it without looking at it, and for a minute, his face was forbidding enough that she wondered if he was just going to stand up and leave.

But all he said, rising from the bed and wincing, was “I’m beginning to think I should have just let you stand up on that Ferris Wheel,” and went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

She hauled her own sweater and t-shirt off in a wodge of fabric, and pulled on the giant Weird Sisters t-shirt she normally slept in, and made sure that she was stowed under the covers and facing away from the bathroom door when he came back out.  

As much as she hadn’t been able to resist taking the piss with her transfigured t-shirt, she drew the line at deliberately looking at a man who made so much effort to cover up his bare skin most of the time.  She’d seen him in a t-shirt exactly once, when she’d come into Grimmauld Place to find him clearing out a recurring plague of doxies from the drawing room curtains.  The scars on his arms couldn’t have been made by anything other than what he was. She supposed that a Muggle might assume that he’d been attacked by a bear or some sort of big cat, but to anyone from the Wizarding World who knew anything about werewolves, they were unmistakable. He’d gone to put a long-sleeved shirt on to cover them up as soon as they had dragged the curtains out into the backyard and burnt them, and neither of them had mentioned it.  She assumed that the scars on his legs would be similar.

“Will I turn the light off?” he said, coming out of the bathroom.  Tonks made a muffled sound of assent from beneath the duvet and listened to him moving quietly about the room.  The bed dipped under his weight, and he gave a soft involuntary sound that might have been relief at finally lying down.

There was a series of rustling movements as he made himself more comfortable, and then he said, “Do you have enough covers?”

“Fine,” she said. “If I hog them or if I kick you, just kick back.”

“Will do,” he said. “Goodnight, Tonks.”

“’Night.”

Ten minutes of joint watchful, wakeful silence later, as they listened to each other breathe, and tried to gauge if the other was falling asleep first, Tonks gave up and rolled over to face him. “You still awake?” she whispered.

“Mmmph,” he said, turning on his side. His shins bumped into her feet, and were hastily withdrawn, and she could feel his body heat radiating out towards her from under the covers.

The silence stretched out between them, something almost tangible in the dark room.

Tonks heaved herself up, raised her arm to put it beneath her head, and elbowed Remus solidly in the face.

His yelp was muffled by her funny bone, and she felt her nails skid up his forehead as she jerked her arm back.

“Sorry, sorry!” she said, mortified, scrabbling for her wand on the bedside table. “ _Lumos_!”

“Augh!” Remus had curled in around himself, jamming his face into the covers and she realized that the light was blinding him rather than helping, and hastily doused it.

She couldn't quite tell what he was saying through the blankets; she just hoped she hadn’t broken his nose.  In the brief flash of wandlight, she hadn't seen any blood on the sheets, and surreptitiously crossed her fingers.

His litany of muffled imprecations gradually became more infrequent, and finally, rather more clearly, he mumbled, “Can I just say that another benefit to sleeping in one’s own bed is that it lowers the risk of having your eyes poked out in your sleep?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, again, miserable.

“’S okay,” he grunted.  “I doubt Mad-Eye put spatial awareness down as part of the Auror curriculum.”

“I think that was the bit of Stealth and Tracking I failed.”

The sound he made in response could have been anything from sarcasm to agreement to residual pain, and there was an abrupt tug on the bedclothes as he rolled over to presumably put his face into his pillow and well out of the danger zone.

Tonks didn't know how long she lay there, mentally kicking herself, until she was distracted by a very definite chill creeping across her knees.  In his flailing, Remus had managed to wind most of the duvet around his thin frame. She tugged at the edge of the duvet that was balancing on her shoulder, not wanting to wake him up. An hour later, her feet were very, very cold, and her reservations about prodding him awake in order to claim her fair share of the bedding had vanished just as soundly as her half of the duvet.

“Remus?” she hissed.

The only sound in response was the spatter of rain on the window.

“Lupin,” she said, and this time – carefully, lightly – placed her hand on what she hoped was his back beneath the folds of the bedding.

He sat up so fast that it was her turn to give a startled yelp.

“What is it?” he said, fire flaring up blue around his hands, illuminating them both with a wavering, underwater glow. “What’s wrong?”

His face was a ghastly colour in the faint light, the start of a bruise blossoming high on one cheekbone, but his eyes were sharp and his whole body was tensed, listening.

“Er,” said Tonks, slowly sitting up. “Nothing. It’s fine. It’s just that you’ve got most of the bedclothes and it’s a bit chilly. Impressive reflexes though, mate,” she offered.

He let out a long slow breath, and she saw some of the tension leave him.

“I thought – never mind,” he said. “I’ll just – “The light around his hands went out, leaving her blinking, and the sudden weight of fabric on her lap announced the redistribution of bedclothes.

“’Is that better?” he said.

“Much, ta,” she said, tucking the edge of the duvet under her legs, and tugging it up over her shoulders as she lay back down.

When Remus lay down again, his arm collided with hers, and, before he could fully untangle himself from her, Tonks – heart loud in her ears, fingers gone suddenly as cold as her feet had just been – reached out, fingers running down his wrist, and took his hand in her own. She expected him to pull back, but, instead his hand – long callused fingers, twice the size of hers – settled around hers. And there they were, lying side by side, holding hands. It felt like being children again, curling into each other in the shelter of a blanket fort while the rain came down outside, sticky with sleep and secrets, as trusting and certain of each other as a sparrow trusts the oak tree it nests in to not fall down.

Next to her, Remus’s breathing eventually slowed and deepened again; he shifted slightly, and one of his legs stretched out over her ankles. Tonks opened her mouth to ask him if he was asleep, wondered irrelevantly if Sirius had remembered to take out the garbage after the last Order meeting, and fell, in her turn, deeply asleep in the bible-black dark.


	6. Like a Winter's Morning

When she woke up, it was early. The rain had stopped, but in the dim grey light from the window, she could see the sky, heavy and overcast, clouds charcoaled with rain, and scudding across the sky.

The bed next to her was empty, the covers flung back in a rumpled heap. She blinked herself awake and wondered where Remus had gone.   The answer came with a terrible choking sound from the direction of the bathroom where it sounded like someone was being dreadfully sick.  She didn’t know whether to get up and go to him, or whether to pretend that she was still asleep. His panting for breath when the retching stopped sounded painful. When the sounds started up again, she made her decision and shuffled out of bed. She poured out a cup of water from the kettle, and hovered outside the bathroom door. When the toilet had flushed, and his breathing sounded less tortured, she tapped gently on the half-closed door and peered in, extending the mug of water ahead of her.

“Thank you.” His voice was cracked and hoarse, and he was slumped back against the bathroom wall, damp with sweat. She had been right about his legs being scarred as well as his arms.

He drank the water slowly, chest heaving as he caught his breath in between swallows, one hand pressed up against his belly. 

Tonks perched on the bathtub rim. “Do you need anything else?”

“No,” he said.  His canines looked very sharp in the unforgiving fluorescent light. “I’m sorry I woke you. Be all right in a bit. Mornings and evenings are the worst, before. I’ll feel better in an hour or so.”

“D’you want me to sit with you?” she said, uncertainly.

He shook his head, but even that slight movement made him go white and she saw him swallow hard. “No. If you could – ugh,” he lurched forward abruptly, clutching at the rim of the toilet bowl, and jerking himself up onto his knees.

 “I’ll just be out here,” said Tonks hastily and fled, pushing the door to behind her.

Ye Gods and little fishes, it really was early. She thought about going back to bed, but then worried that that was too callous. She got dressed instead, made the bed, made a cup of tea, sat in the chair by the window to drink it, looking out at the rain on the hills, and trying not to hear the sounds coming from the bathroom.

He had been right down to the minute. When he shuffled out of the bathroom, it felt like an eternity had passed, but it had only been an hour, and he boiled the kettle, and sat down with his tea in turn on top of the neatly made bed, slumped back against the headboard. He didn’t seem to want to talk, and so they drank their tea in silence while the daylight got stronger, and the first splatters of the day’s rain hit the window.

 *

“Is it always that bad?” she said, slithering over wet grass.

Remus didn’t pretend to not know what she was talking about. “Oh, I’ve been worse,” he said. “I think that might be our stile there, don’t you?”

He did look better now that they were out in the fresh air, she thought. Still pale and wan, but he’d drunk three cups of heavily sugared tea, and made it through two slices of toast with butter without incident, and was keeping pace with her on the narrow track. He led the way over the stile, balancing easily on the narrow, icy, beams, hands still tucked deep into his overcoat pockets, as unconcerned as if he were on a broad sidewalk. Tonks glared at his back as she skidded across them in his wake.

Their path led them up a narrow path alongside a barbed wire fence, and his back was a thin dark line ahead of her, moving ahead until the ground suddenly steepened to scree, and they went scrambling up it to come breaking out of the freezing fog halfway up the steep hillside onto the saddle between Eildon Hill North and Eildon Mid Hilll.

“We can’t be too far away,” he said, peering at the disintegrating map.

“I vote we stop for a cuppa,” said Tonks, and sat down firmly on the top of the remnants of a wall and pulled her thermos out of her rucksack.

He settled down beside her.

The wall couldn’t exactly be called warm, Tonks thought, and the wind was bitter, but it was dry enough, now that they were out of the mist, and the view was certainly nicer than any she’d seen in London.

Great swathes of human habitation were hidden from view by the rolling hummocks and valleys of the borderlands, and  the mist rolling below them, and the late winter moor stretched out around them, still surprisingly colourful despite the season. Infinite shades of deep brown and green and grey, all bracken and dolerite and somewhere the sound of water running under a winter sky, the thin puddles on the path rimed over with ice that made a satisfying squeaking crunch when you stomped on it.

She glanced over at Remus to see how he was doing after the steep incline, gauging the inclines and declines to come.

“Tonks, do stop looking at me like that,” he said mildly.  It sounded like an imprecation, but she could see the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, and wondered, if, in his own particular Moonyesque way, he was having some private fun at her expense.

“Just checking that you’re not about to keel over on me,” she said, doing her best to sound like McGonagall at her most severe. “If you do keel over, by the way, I will leave your arse here, Lupin. I’m on a mission, you know.”

“Duly noted,” he said, and this time he glanced over at her, and his grin was swift and luminous. The exertion had brought a bit of colour back into his face, and although he was breathing quickly, she figured that anyone would be after that hill.

“’S nice out here,” she said, after a minute, kicking her heels back and forth against the stone wall, and knocking two stones to the ground.

“It is,” he agreed. “Even with you destroying the archaeology.”

“I think you mean especially with me destroying the archaeology,” she said.

“I like stone walls,” he said, neatly dodging the question of her presence. “They always seemed like liminal places. Bridges between the people and the land, somehow.”

“Are you usually this metaphysical at this time of the month?”

“No, it’s a permanent failing, I’m afraid.” He finished the last of the tea in his thermos cup and handed it back to her. “Shall we go on?”

“We shall,” she said, hopping down from the wall and dusting off her backside.


End file.
